Solution for Long Mesh Time of Shells

When meshing shells, the mesh gets up to 99% and then hangs for a very long time sometimes for hours depending on the mesh size. The mesher is going through some type of crazy routine trying to orient all of the shell faces in the same direction. We can do this manually in a few seconds by picking the face and then right clicking mesh and “Flip Shell Elements”.

Go to Simulation options and un-check the “Automatic re-alignment for non-composite shells”:

In the example model, doing this reduced the mesh time from 8 min 21 seconds down to 20 seconds.

Adjusting the mesh size after setting the face orientation causes some of the faces to be re-oriented. Manually flipping the faces is still much quicker than waiting for the automatic re-alignment.